As a restaurant worker and Portland resident, I am disappointed to learn that it was only by accident that my city councilors raised the municipal tipped minimum wage. The truth is that servers and other tipped workers are not making as much money as many assume.

In “Council told of minimum wage issue, groups say” (Page A1, July 9), Steve DiMillo, owner of DiMillo’s On the Water, said increasing the tipped minimum wage would give a raise to “the highest earners in the restaurant.”

In reality, however, servers’ national median wage, including their tips, is less than 10 cents higher than the national median wage for dishwashers.

This trend is due to the fact that the majority of servers work in full-service casual restaurants, like Denny’s or IHOP, and not higher-end establishments like DiMillo’s.

Indeed, tipped workers disproportionately live in poverty. According to Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, while 8 percent of all workers live below the poverty line, 18 percent of tipped workers face poverty. Tipped restaurant workers have three times the poverty rate of the general employed population.

Helping an especially vulnerable group of workers by raising the tipped minimum wage has been presented as a threat to the restaurant industry in Portland.

But seven states (Alaska, Montana, Nevada, Minnesota, California, Oregon and Washington) have abolished the tip credit system, requiring employers to pay tipped and non-tipped workers the same minimum wage.

Instead of experiencing economic downturn, these states have actually experienced above-average employment growth. The National Restaurant Association projected employment growth of 10.5 percent in 10 years for those states without a subminimum tipped wage, compared to 9.1 percent in the states with a tip credit system.

In debunking some myths regarding the tipped minimum wage, I hope to persuade my city councilors to maintain the $6.35-an-hour rate for tipped workers.

Monica Millay

Portland

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